BOOTAN. 
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cultivated than the rest of their countrymen, they have the best pro¬ 
spect of being selected for public offices: and, in fact, the greater part 
of all who are employed in such situations, are chosen from among 
them. Yet whether the following peculiarity be imputable to early 
tuition, inability, or disgust, I cannot determine. It very frequently hap¬ 
pens, that those who have long enjoyed posts of honour, or emolument, 
take the sudden resolution of retiring for ever from the business and 
the cares of life; afterwards, under the sanction of a religious impulse, 
the inspired devotee chooses some solitary station, perhaps the summit 
of a mountain, where he builds himself a cottage, and having depo¬ 
sited a hord of grain in it, shuts himself up, determined never again 
to return into the world, or hold any intercourse with mankind. 
Thus secluded from society, if, in consequence of an erroneous cal¬ 
culation, he sees his stock of food about to fail, while life maintains 
its post in full vigour, and is by no means inclined to quit its hold, 
the sole reliance of the retired devotee, for future support, must then 
rest on the adventitious visits of such, as hold converse with the buried 
living. The benevolence which thus ministers to his necessities, has also 
its appropriate merit; so that the recluse may yet exist, for months 
or years, upon the bounty that places his daily food at his door, without 
the least knowledge of the hand that feeds him; till at length the feeble 
principle that animates the human frame, and preserves it from disso¬ 
lution, ceases to perform its functions, and the individual is no more. 
It is true, he might long have ceased to be of any earthly importance, 
whatever spiritual esteem is attached to the devotee, the hermit, or 
the misanthrope, term him which you will: yet this singular bent of 
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